In what could be a puzzling rarity in the history of Zimbabwean politics, the revolutionary ZANU PF party has sensationally claimed that violent opposition party activists from the second city of Bulawayo, on Monday descended on its supporters who they reportedly attacked and injured while they were peacefully going about their business of campaigning for the party’s candidates ahead of the March 26 by-elections.
The hard-to-believe poorly evidenced claims were made by the long-ruling party’s Political Commissar, Mike Bimha, at a special media briefing held at the Zanu PF headquarters in the capital Harare, yesterday.
State media reports say, the attacks which allegedly occured in Bulawayo’s Njube suburb, resulted in several casualties and saw some of the injured Zanu PF supporters being ferried to hospital for medical treatment.
Party publicist, Christopher Mutsvangwa, who chaired the meeting said:
“We are appealing to the responsible political parties to desist from violence”.
Mutsvangwa and Bimha were in the company of the Zanu PF director of information and publicity, businessman Tafadzwa Mugwadi during the press conference.
“It is surprising that after holding a succesful rally in Epworth, here in Harare this morning (Monday), we had our members attacked in Njube, Bulawayo,” Bimha told journalists.
He added:
“We had campaign teams who were going around doing their business and we have been informed that they were attacked by members of the opposition. They were attacked by people carrying stones and others using catapults. We have several cases of injuries as a result of that.”
By late Monday night, national police authorities were yet to make confirmation on the alleged incidences of violence, despite Bimha claiming that they had already reported the matter to the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP).
Bimha said he had communicated with one of the officials in Bulawayo, who said that they were on their way to the hospital to receive medical treatment.
The incidence comes as shocking news to the general Zimbabwean populace as it is the ruling Zanu PF which, instead, has a well-documented history of using violence in the pursuit of crushing dissence in the troubled southern African nation.
Humiliatingly dismissed late Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe who was replaced by wartime ally and longtime predecessor Emmerson Mnangagwa following the dramatic political events of November 2017 is on record saying that the ruling party has “degrees in violence”.
Heedless of amplified pressure from western countries who discredited the bloody 2008 run off- likened to a genocide in certain quarters- Mugabe’s then spokesperson, George Charamba, who is now under Mnangagwa said the Western powers ‘can go hang a thousand times’.
“They can go and hang a thousand times, they have no basis, they have no claim on Zimbabwe politics at all,” said Charamba back in 2008.
Five years earlier, Mugabe had told the then main opposition MDC led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai at Zanu PF rally in 2003 that “those who play with fire” were going to be consumed.
“Let the MDC and its leadership be warned that those who play with fire will not only be burnt, but consumed by that fire”, the liberator-turned-tyrant was quoted as saying.
Zwnews
